Film director & producer

Biography

Klaartje Quirijns grew up in the Netherlands and, after graduating with a law degree from the University of Amsterdam, has been working as a journalist and director since 1992. Klaartje Quirijns moved to New York City in 1998 where she lived until 2007. Since 2007 she has been living with her family in London.

Klaartje started out her career as a TV journalist, producing reports for Dutch television's most important investigative programme. She produced many stories and interviews, and was the first Dutch journalist to report from New York on the events of September 11, 2001. She subsequently directed and produced several feature-length documentaries.

In 2013, Quirijns began to direct fiction films. Her first work was Speelman, a story of a marriage, which premiered to great acclaim at the Dutch Film Festival in the Netherlands.

Klaartje Quirijns won many awards; she was the first to win the prestigious documentary 50.000 euro stipend from the Prince Bernard Cultural Fund, she was nominated for the European Academy Award, she won the Prix Italia 2012, the Jury prize Festival International du Film des Droits de l’Homme, Paris, 2008, received a Special Mention of the jury of IDFA 2007, Special Mention of the jury of Movies that Matter 2007, and won the award for Best Documentary at Film Noir Festival, Courmayeur, 2007)

Speelman

CTMLEV Pictures / VARA / NTR / VPRO

Businessman Sweder Speelman leads a successful life with his wife Cecile, a celebrated concert pianist. When his momentum is slowed down by small events, his autopilot seems to start failing. The world around him seems to exclude him and making him a spectator of his own life. When he follows a cat into an empty house, he is rewarded with a secret view of his own villa and Cecile. Sweder decides to disappear to see how Cecile responds to his absence. As Sweder obsessively observes his wife, he slowly loses touch with himself and reality.

Director

Klaartje Quirijns

Camera

Martijn van Broekhuizen

Sound

Jos ten Klooster

Editor

Katharina Wartena

Anton Corbijn Inside Out

CTMLEV Pictures / EyesWidefilms / VPRO

An intimate portrait of Anton Corbijn as he travels the world as a photographer, filmmaker and video artist. A unique and revelatory look at the drama and conflict inherent in the man himself.

Director

Camera

Sound

Editor

Peace vs Justice

Stacy Sullivan / VPRO / Submarine / Eyeswidefilms

Peace vs Justice examined the moral dilemmas that arise in the pursuit of Western ideals of justice.

Peace vs Justice takes a critical look at the The International Criminal Court (ICC) and its first case, against Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda.

Director

Klaartje Quirijns

Camera

Martijn van Broekhuizen

Sound

Jos ten Klooster

Editor

Ruben van der Hammen

The Dictator Hunter

VPRO / Submarine / EyesWidefilms

Reed Brody hunts dictators for a living as a lawyer for Human Right Watch. For 15 years , Reed Brody has been chasing one former dictator in particular: Hissene Habre, the former leader of Chad, charged with killing thousands of his own countrymen in the 1980’s.

The Dictator Hunter follows Brody over the course of two suspenseful years as he travels through Africa, Europe and the United States in his attempt to break the cycle of impunity.

Director

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Editor

The Brooklyn Connection

Stacy Sullivan / Amago / VPRO / EyesWidefilms

The Brooklyn Connection, a study of gun-running in the US which explored the thin line between being a freedom fighter and a terrorist.

The film follows Florin Krasniqi, an Albanian roofer in New York. He describes how the US is used as a launching pad for waging war abroad, in this case Kosovo, through the purchase and export of arms, which could also be used to fuel guerrilla armies, terrorist organizations, and organized crime beyond America’s borders.

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Films in development

The Dictator Hunters

A fiction film based on her documentary The Dictator Hunter. Produced by Anne Carey.

They Fuck You Up

An essayistic film, drawing on psychoanalysis, about the roles we play, scripted by our family and how we might break through these patterns by understanding them. Produced by Pieter van Huystee.

Ten White Geese

A full-length fiction film based on a book by Gerbrand Bakker, a Dutch writer that has also received high acclaim internationally, including winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013. Produced by Jeroen Beker and Els Vandervorst.